The new power broker: How Zohran Mamdani muscled NYC’s Democratic establishment
Outside Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s primary night party, four men on the sidewalk were dressed in full neon sequins, trying to get the party started. Inside, the bar had barely opened.
Espaillat spent 20 years trying to get to Washington and another 10 years in Congress. He arrived to give his concession speech and left in under 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, the real party was going on about three miles away. That’s where Zohran Mamdani was completing his victory lap of three celebrations with candidates who likely would not have gotten near Congress without his endorsements, just a year after he stunned the political world by beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/24/politics/zohran-mamdani-democrat-anger-primariesOpen linkView original on lemmy.world237
Comments29
The problem is thinking of him as a "power broker" rather than one part of a larger movement. Power is not something that can be "brokered", it comes from the collective effort of people.
I think they're trying to compare him to Robert Moses, who has a book called "The Power Broker" written about him. He was a prominent NYC unelected government official who held great sway over NYC and NY politics for decades.
I don't think it's a good comparison, as Mamdani was fairly elected, and didn't use his soft power to get others elected. He just endorsed people with the politics people have wanted for the democratic party for decades.
He "muscled" them? Really? And he completed "his" victory lap?
Sigh what the fuck is wrong with CNN.
Oligarchs want it to seem like Mamdani is doing all this, and not that voters have always wanted candidates like this.
Yeah, organizing a bunch of people and getting them all behind the same candidates to disrupt a well entrenched political machine is an accomplishment, but I think the real story here is that that bunch of people that are still furious with Jeffries' and AIPAC's genocidal bullshit and all the terrible effects they've had on our politics, and Mamdani is just in the right place at the right time to seize on that anger and make it productive
No.
Mamdani is not special, the vast majority of people are closer to him than any neoliberal.
He ran a great campaign and is doing an amazing job. But voters choose to vote for him, and if they choose to vote for people similar to Mamdani, it's not because Mamdani told them to.
It's because this is the type of policy/candidate that people want.
It's bigger than Mamdani and it's bigger than NYC and the entire state.
Isn't Mamdani also rich? Won't be therefore be an oligarch also? Technically.
Who told you that?
Did someone tell you he's a leprechaun too?
Do I need to provide sources that he doesn't shit gold?
I read that his mother was a well received director, and assumed he came from a rich family. Is his family not wealthy?
No.
No.
If you stopped moving goalposts, you could have easily googled it by now buddy...
Or are you "just asking questions"?
I thought all the rightwingers had given that up
You're right: I went from referring to him as directly being wealthy, and then talked about his family (or at least his mom) being wealthy. I'm conflating the two.
Are we no longer allowed to do that on forums? Would you prefer I speak to machines only? What's an Internet without the ability to converse like this?
I'm not a right winger, but is me talking like this/asking these questions upsetting you enough that you don't think I support him and that I must be right wing?
His net worth is 200,000 to 300,000. That isn’t much for a married couple by New York standards https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/zohran-mamdani-family-wealth-inheritance-details-feb87e
Who's more terrified right now Republicans or the old Democratic party? to me it seems like the Democratic party is losing control and they don't like it. Good
the GOP old guard died with trump, now it's the democrats turn
The GOP old guard didn't die, it capitulated. They then proceeded to work with Trump to advance their agenda and found him more amenable to it than they expected. Remember how Trump used to promise an end to forever wars? That's why the GOP old guard fought against him; they believed him. As soon as it became obvious (to them) that it was a lie they were enthusiastically on board. His administration is an alliance of the GOP old guard and Trump's personal sycophants.
What's gross is all the politicians, even those "on his side," saying that he's wrong for bucking the establishment and "burning bridges."
IMO, savvy supporters of his should start flipping these silly phrases on their head. Like:
"We're not burning bridges, we're replacing stubborn gatekeepers."
or
"We're not burning bridges, we're building new ones to the workers who feel abandoned."
or
"We're not radical leftists because what's more centrist than speaking to the heart of America, it's working class?"
or even
"Washington doesn't have a 'lack of centrists' problem, it has a self-centerist problem."
When they say that it's "allyship on my terms" that is me not giving in to establishment demands. That's me not giving concessions on your behalf to corporate megadonors and the politicians supporting them. I am here to represent you, the people, who elected me and I won't back down. We will have our terms, not the billionaires.
If I were Mamdani
CNN.
The Billionaire Megaphone.
Don’t forget, that’s the, if you will, topspin on this.
I just want to say, Mamdani is excellent. But I feel like he's getting a lot of undue credit when the candidates he endorsed are just great people. For example, Brad Lander was a similarly-strong candidate for NYC mayor who was arrested by ICE for attempting to prevent them from detaining someone. When Mamdani won the Primary for Mayor everyone kinda just knew Brad had a future somewhere else.
Mamdani deserves some credit for endorsing good people, and using his brand to boost them, but it seems like the accomplishments of those he endorsed are getting overshadowed in articles and headlines by what seems like an attempt to turn real progressive momentum into "Mamdani's little club."
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Mamdani, or even him being the face of the movement. It just seems like there are people in power trying to undermine him and the movement by making him the face of it.
You've got it backwards.
People seeing Mamdani as the face of Progressivism is a good thing.
Most people are idiots, and vote for stupid reasons. Donald Trump, born a millionaire, managed to convince people he was 'anti-establishment.'
You're going to get a lot more votes with a handsome couple than you will with a million well researched position papers.
Exactly. The goal is to stop the change of politics from a money machine to a force that creates positive change (for the bottom 90%).
They cannot attack the policies, because the US has proven they have billions for useless stuff and never for improving the lives of the citizens who live here. So instead they have to make it seem like the party who is starting this change is using underhanded tactics or is driven by one person. Otherwise they would have to acknowledge that this is what the base wants from their politicians.
No.
Think of it this way. Look at all the GOPs who have swung Far Right after Trump won. Plenty of folks who pooh-poohed him in 2015 are all for him when they saw he was winning elections.
Heck, the GOP has been 'The Party of Lincoln' since 1865, no matter what changes they've made in actual policy.
A lot of people vote for pretty faces. Many, many more than vote for policy.
Make up your mind.
"You’re going to get a lot more votes with a handsome couple than you will with a million well researched position papers." That's the end of my first comment.
"A lot of people vote for pretty faces. Many, many more than vote for policy." That's the end of my second comment.
What confused you?
Ah my bad. I though you said, "Many, many more vote for policy." I missed the 'than'.
I disagree. We will see who is right as history moves forward. We haven't had politicians who actually deliver positive life altering changes for a very long time.
Mamdani has proven already that he is using his positional power to change NY for the better. If you want to see the ways he has taken action, drop by his YT page. He has a great PR team that highlights the things he is working on or has done.
I think this is only partially true. Say what you will about Obama, but he did meaningfully improve a huge number of people's lives just by raising the age restriction for kids on their parents' insurance plans and a few other programs for the expansion of medical care coverage.
He's still a shithead who authorized the bombing of hospitals abroad and failed to deliver universal healthcare, but it was nice—even for me—to get just a crumb of progress for the first time at a point in my life where it made the biggest impact.
Same thing with Trump-- I think the stimulus checks were both objectively and subjectively a good thing.
The problem is, we can do so much better than crumbs.
Personally I like Mamdani. I voted for him.
That said, he was incredibly lucky to get elected. Incumbent Mayor Adams got caught in a massive scandal, and Andrew Cuomo was tainted by another scandal.
Even with that, he barely won, with 51% of the vote. Kamala Harris got 65%.